March 14: Part II My New Friend Michael

"And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1:4


Since some of the youth group was on ski trip, my youth director let me lead youth this past Sunday, and I invited some DSLTers to come and help out. My friend Miller and I by chance came super-early to get all the tweaks out of our lesson. We were sitting under a tree in the Preschool yard planning out our lesson on getting to know the poor when a man came up. He had a shaggy beard and was wearing clothes that were somewhat dirty. He leaned over the fence and asked if the pastor was around. I told him no but that he would be there in about 30 minutes, and invited him to come sit down with us.

We introduced ourselves and he told us about himself. His name was Michael and he was headed down from AR (and originally TN.) He was down on his luck and was hoping to find a job on the coast. We asked him how we could help out and after discussing ideas came to the conclusion that Pastor Billy would know better than us.

So we sat and talked about the Bible for a while, he mentioned he liked Proverbs and John (which is where the verse is from.) We talked about the books we liked, and he told us how proud he was that we were involved with church. He spoke to us almost as if he had known us for years, and we carried on conversations for about 20 minutes. Before our pastor got there we told him thanks for talking with us, and joked that we had been hanging out together all day and were glad to have someone else to talk to. At that he responded that he was glad not to have to talk to himself anymore.

When Pastor Billy came the two went into his office and Billy took care of everything. Later when he came down to youth (where we were having our lesson on getting to know the poor) Billy remarked "you just never know when Jesus is gonna show up."

When I look back I think of all things that happened that day, all the intricate details in God's plan that led us exactly to where we were at that specific time, all I can think is "what awesome God." Sometimes God puts us in weird situations that are hard to comprehend, but if we live as children of the Light and not of darkness we can more readily understand and embrace it. So to wrap it up- is this a story about how Miller and I got to know the poor and help Michael out? I guess it could be. But I think it's a much better story of how God showed Himself to us through our new friend Michael.